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This FBI wanted poster obtained April 25, 2018 shows drawings of a suspect known as the “Golden State Killer”.
A notorious decades-old mystery over the identity of the “Golden State Killer,” believed to have carried out dozens of rapes and multiple murders in California in the 1970s and 1980s, may finally be solved: a suspect has reportedly been arrested. Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, is being held in the Sacramento County jail on two counts of murder, the Sacramento Bee reported on April 25, 2018.According to local television stations, DeAngelo was once a policeman. The Golden State Killer, also known as the “East Area Rapist” and “Original Nightstalker,” is suspected of carrying out at least 12 murders and 45 rapes in California between 1976 and 1986, according to the FBI. (HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images)

Authorities on Wednesday identified Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, of Citrus Heights, as the man suspected of being the "Golden State Killer" and "East Area Rapist."

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Authorities huddle outside a home searched in connection with the arrest of a man on suspicion of murder, April 25, 2018, in Citrus Heights, Calif. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office plans to make a major announcement in the case of a serial killer they say committed at least 12 homicides, 45 rapes and dozens of burglaries across California in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Kevin Tapia and his daughter Quinn, watch as authorities search in connection with the arrest of a man on suspicion of murder, April 25, 2018, in Citrus Heights, Calif. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office plans to make a major announcement in the case of a serial killer they say committed at least 12 homicides, 45 rapes and dozens of burglaries across California in the 1970’s and 1980s.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

A car is backed out of the garage of a home searched in connection with the arrest of a man on suspicion of murder, April 25, 2018, in Citrus Heights, Calif. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office plans to make a major announcement in the case of a serial killer they say committed at least 12 homicides, 45 rapes and dozens of burglaries across California in the 1970’s and 1980s.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Ventura County District Attorney Gregory D. Totten speaks at the press conference outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, the suspected “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones talks with media after the press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo as the “Golden State Killer” outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Jennifer Carole poses for a photograph in her home in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. Her father, Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith were both bludgeoned to death by the so-called “Golden State Killer.” (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

A photograph of Jennifer Carole’s father Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith who were both bludgeoned to death by the so-called “Golden State Killer.” (Photograph courtesy of Jennifer Carole)

Bruce Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed by the “Golden State Killer”, speaks with Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas at the press conference outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, believed to be the “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton speaks at the press conference outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, believed to be the “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Bruce Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed by the “Golden State Killer”, speaks at the press conference outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, believed to be the “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Anne Marie Schubert listens to other speakers with Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from county across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, believed to be the “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley speaks at the press conference outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, believed to be the “Golden State Killer”. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Outside the Sacramento District Attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. District Attorneys from counties across the Bay Area join the FBI and crime investigators in a press conference announcing the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, 72. (Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group)

Jennifer Carole poses for a photograph with a photograph on her phone of her father, Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith, in her home in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. Her father, Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith were both bludgeoned to death by the so-called “Golden State Killer.” (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

A photograph of Jennifer Carole’s father Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith who were both bludgeoned to death by the so-called “Golden State Killer.” (Photograph courtesy of Jennifer Carole)

Jennifer Carole shows off one of the possessions from her father Lyman Smith, a bottle of cologne, in her home in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Wednesday, April 25, 2018. Her father, Lyman Smith and stepmother, Charlene Smith were both bludgeoned to death by the so-called “Golden State Killer.” (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

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For more than 30 years as investigators searched in vain to identify the enigmatic serial killer and rapist, Joseph James DeAngelo lived without a hint of suspicion, working in a warehouse and raising his family in a one-story stucco house with a three-car garage in a comfortable Sacramento suburb.

On Wednesday, the balding, jowly 72-year-old was behind bars, accused of killing at least 12 people and raping at least 45 women in a terrifying crime spree that spanned 10 counties from Sacramento to the Bay Area and Orange County in the 1970s and ‘80s.

While the suspect may be one of the most prolific serial killers in California history, the cases across the state were not linked for years. And in the Bay Area, where women were raped but none were killed, the case was largely unknown. But elsewhere, the man — who climbed through windows in the middle of the night, who terrorized couples by demanding that one tie up the other, who stacked china plates or cups on husbands’ backs to scare them into paralysis while he raped their wives in the next room — has been called the East Area Rapist, the Golden State Killer, the Original Night Stalker, the Visalia Ransacker.

Authorities on Wednesday identified Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, of Citrus Heights, as the man suspected of being the “Golden State Killer” and “East Area Rapist.”

“It’s happiness and horror. I’ve cried today. I’m still shaking,” said Jennifer Carole from Santa Cruz, who was 18 when her father, Lyman Smith, and stepmother, Charlene, were bludgeoned to death at their Ventura County home in 1980. “It’s really big sadness and loss and complete disbelief that they caught the person.”

Her 12-year-old brother found their bloody bodies hidden under the bed covers. It was a horrific scene, repeated up and down the state for a decade, that haunted investigators for more than 40 years. It wasn’t until 2001 that DNA linked the cases at each end of the state. In the Bay Area, the suspect raped women in a dozen separate attacks in 1978 and 1979: two in San Jose, two in Concord, three in Danville, two in San Ramon, two in Walnut Creek and one in Fremont.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said Wednesday that she has been connected to the Fremont case since 1978, when she was a volunteer at a local rape crisis center and counseled one of the suspect’s rape victims.

“A woman and her partner were asleep. They woke up to this (man) standing over them with a gun,” O’Malley told reporters. “He raped, robbed and followed the same M.O. that he had done so many times before.”

Authorities wouldn’t say what led them to DeAngelo, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and former police officer in the 1970s in Exeter and Auburn, where he was fired in 1979 after shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. Local news reports at the time noted that he refused to submit to questioning about the shoplifting case and never attempted to appeal his termination. But in recent weeks investigators staked him out until they were able to pick up an item he discarded that contained his DNA, they said, and matched it with DNA from the crime scenes that had been logged into a database.

“Each of us knew the answer was — and is — always going to be in the DNA,” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said Wednesday at a news conference packed with top prosecutors from around the state where the killer had struck. “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.”

Above: Survivor Recalls Encounter With East Area Rapist/Serial Killer

Although investigators across the state never gave up on the cold case, she said, they did not convene as a task force until June 2016, the 40th anniversary of the first crime. “The message was clear in 2016,” she said: “The magnitude of this case demanded that it be solved.”

So far, DeAngelo is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in three counties, including two in Sacramento, two in Ventura and four in Orange. The nearly 60 victims ranged in age from 13 to 41 and included women home alone, women at home with their children, and husbands and wives, according to the FBI. He often ransacked the homes and in the case of the Smith killings in Ventura County, he appeared to have eaten a meal and left dirty dishes in the sink, Carole of Santa Cruz said.

Above: First Survivor of East Area Rapist/Serial Killer Recalls Encounter

Schubert said she was 12 when the killings began in the Sacramento area and lived near the cluster of crimes.

“It was a time of innocence here in 1976,” she said. “No one locked their doors. Kids rode their bikes to school. Parents let their kids play outside. For all of us who lived in this community during that time, it all changed.”

The memories, she said, “are very vivid.”

Indeed, outside DeAngelo’s house on Canyon Oak Drive, a normally quiet street dotted with palm trees and short-cut lawns, TV trucks and residents from around the region gathered to see how this man lived undetected in their midst.

One of the residents was Penny Ryan of nearby Rocklin, who was in elementary school when the attacks in Sacramento began, instilling anxiety and panic in every home.

“My dad bought a gun, he loaded it every night and he put it under the pillow,” she said.

One day, she said, her toddler brother was jumping on the bed when he got a hold of the gun and it went off, shooting their father in the back. He survived, but the traumatic event left a permanent mark on the family’s history.

“I can’t believe he was only 15 minutes away,” Ryan said.

Above: 1977 Recording of Suspected East Area Rapist

Neighbors said DeAngelo had been living in the house since the early 1980s. He was a divorced father of three and was living with a daughter and grandchild, neighbors said. He worked for 27 years in a Save Mart warehouse and was recently retired, according to the grocery store chain.

“None of his actions in the workplace would have lead us to suspect any connection to crimes being attributed to him,” according to a Save Mart statement. “We are working with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office on their investigation.”

Brigitte Peterson, who has lived down the street for 25 years, said her son played at DeAngelo’s house when his grandson visited, something unsettling in hindsight.

“He always looks irritated and wasn’t really nice. He had moments when he was in his front yard when he just got angry at himself yelling profanities or even people passing by,” she said. “It was a relief that he was arrested.”

Megan Merz, a graduate student in criminal justice at Sacramento State, has spent the past year writing her thesis on the case. Standing across from DeAngelo’s house Wednesday afternoon, she said she was stunned to learn that “my entire life, he’s been here.”

A five-part documentary about the case, “Unmasking a Killer,” recently aired on HLN. Author Michelle McNamara, who died in her sleep in April 2016, wrote a best-selling true-crime book about the case, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” that was published earlier this year. Authorities said Wednesday that while those stories brought more attention to the cases, they didn’t lead to DeAngelo’s arrest.

“This was a true convergence of emerging technology and dogged determination by detectives,” Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said. “In this case, justice was delayed. It wasn’t swift, but I can assure you it will be sure.”

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to NBA Finals. In a video that went viral, she captured runners paying tribute to a World War II veteran. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

Mark Gomez has worked for the Mercury News since 1992, including the past ten years as a reporter on the breaking news/public safety team. He is a South Bay native and graduate of San Jose State University.